In anticipation of The Mashies, Mashable is running a weekly series celebrating some advertising "firsts." Watch for new installments in the series every week. As opposed to other advertising "firsts" like the first TV ad or the first print execution...

The much-reviled banner ad appears to have some life left. Display advertising -- a category that includes banners -- grew 26.3% globally in the first quarter, according to Nielsen. The increase was led by Asia-Pacific and Latin America, where displa...

Add this to the list of clever display ads: Life insurance company Prudential is staging a front-page takeover of the NYTimes.com Tuesday. The takeover includes a large interactive unit above the fold that asks you to enter your birth date to see the...

First there were "save-able" banner ads -- now there are pinnable ones. Gucci unveiled this week a banner ad with a small "Pin it" button on the bottom left-hand corner. The ad is part of Gucci's Fall/Winter 2012 digital campaign, and will run on fiv...

In case you missed it, Google broke a cardinal rule of its famously clean white-space design Tuesday morning. For the first time, the company put an animated banner ad on its sacrosanct search homepage. "The playground is open," the ad, for the Nexus...

It's only been six weeks since Marissa Mayer left Google for Yahoo, and already the company is violating some of the tenets she established there. At least that's how some are reacting to the animated banner ad Google put on its front page Tuesday. M...

It's no secret that at one in 1,000, the average click-through rate for banner ad is rather pitiful. Think of other things with similar probabilities. For instance, over the course of your life, you have a one in 3,000 chance of getting struck by lig...

Do you have what it takes to be a world-class pianist? If you're like most people, the answer is no, but an interactive banner ad from MetLife gives you a little taste. The ad, created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, features Schroeder, the Peanuts char...

AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft are teaming up to sell ads on each other's sites, according to a report. The three companies are reasoning that there's strength in numbers and perhaps hoping to gain some ground against Google. Executives from the three comp...

Although banner ads may be experiencing big growth this year, they're not getting any more effective. The average click-though rate for banners fell in 2010, according to a survey by Google. Google's report, seen as the industry standard, pegged 2010...

We knew that Internet advertising is on a strong upward trajectory. But now analyst firm eMarketer is predicting double-digit growth through 2015. Spending on online ads will hit $50 billion that year -- that's almost double last year’s spending figu...

There’s a great disconnect in the advertising world right now. On the one hand, everyone agrees that banner ads aren’t working. The click-through rate for banners is still one in 1,000. If you’re like most people, you’ve only clicked on a banner by a...

In another sign of confirmation that the display ad business is booming, Kantar Media estimates such advertising grew 14.6% in 2011's first quarter. Display, a.k.a. banner ads, was a bright spot in an ad industry that grew just 4.4% in Q1, Kantar rep...

In what looks like a win-win for the advertiser and publisher, Callaway Golf has launched a promotion that lets users create their own banner ads to post on ESPN's homepage. What makes the initiative attractive to ESPN is that after fans create their...

In an attempt to improve upon the paltry click-through rates on most banner ads, USA Network recently rolled out a banner promoting the show White Collar, asking users to play a game on The New York Times's home page (iPad only). The ad, created by G...

If you're fed up with online advertising, you're not alone. A recent survey of 100 advertising agency executives found that their clients are losing patience with digital advertising. When asked why, advertisers noted that such ads don't work very we...

So there are two items to do with YouTube that are making their way around the tech news world. One to do with big billboards that would take up a good portion of the site’s front page real estate - if only briefly upon visitors’ initial arrival; and...

SocialMedia, an advertising network which purports to deliver marketing services to over 5,000 applications spread throughout Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, and MySpace, is announcing a new option to clients and their users, Social Banners. In effect, these gr...

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